Not surprisingly so the Guardian is the only newspaper in the western world that might wanna tell you the truth as is, and even take a shot or two while doing it.
Best thing is to read two equal-but-opposite new sources. I like The Times for my right-wing slant and the New York Times for my left-wing, that way I get a balanced picture. You might prefer the Guardian and the Daily Mail. But read both and make up your own mind.
How does that preclude a particular agenda from being to seek and tell the truth? Not commenting on the Guardian as much as on basic logic.
There is also the factor that news outlets are commercial enterprises and have a certain vested interest in telling their audience what they want to hear. I used to work for Reuters, and news is a horribly expensive business to be in, the margins are razor thin. Some organizations have workarounds for that (Reuters subsidizes news with financial services, Al Jazeera has a Sheik, the BBC has the taxpayer and so on). The Guardian makes a loss, but someone is footing the bill - what does that someone want you to think?
But as I say, as an individual, you can defend yourself against this, by reading two newspapers, or at least, cross-checking stories. If the Guardian and the Daily Mail ever agreed on anything, then that thing would probably be "the truth" in an objective sense...
Yes, the world is complex, that's why I think "left and right" is too simple a dichotomy. It leaves out more than it covers, and adding a lot of biased sources together doesn't necessarily cancel the bias out, leaving the facts.
Say you read articles of each "side" about colony collapse disorder -- where on that spectrum do statements of actual beekeepers fit in? Or hey, consider well sourced articles on Wikipedia, say, about skin colors and "races".. not a fun ride for racists. Does that make Wikipedia "leftist"? Or is it rather that reality is "leftist" in that case?
If you go back to the original meaning of the words, right basically means supporting the status quo and special privilege (the king, that is), and left being against it. Since then it has come to mean all sorts of things for all sorts of people.
Is someone who is against abortion and for gay marriage in the US a liberal or a conservative? Are they liberal on gay marriage while being conservative on abortion? If you allow for such granularity, you are back to reading articles by individidual authors -- even a "left-wing" newspaper can publish a "right-wing" article, and none of them will ever publish the perspective of someone who thinks all objects are just delusions of the mind, that there exists nothing but everything, because such a person would not bother to write, and nobody would understand it.
> The Guardian makes a loss, but someone is footing the bill - what does that someone want you to think?
In this case, we can at least find out what the trust wants you to think that they want you to think it: http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/the-scott-trust/values/ Granted, everybody says that.. But that doesn't mean everybody is lying or deluding themselves about it, and if it does, it includes you and me, too, and we're back at square one.
Incidentally, right and left mean which side of the House of Commons the parties sit - whoever is in government now, sits on the right and the opposition on the left. So you see the absurdity - the last government was the left on the right...
This statement is misleading and ultimately false. Truth is either subjective (as you seem to believe) or objective. I believe the later.
Here is an interesting dialog on the subject. It's old but shows a point:
# IS TRUTH RELATIVE?
Protagoras: Truth is relative. It is only a matter of opinion.
Socrates: You mean that truth is mere subjective opinion?
Protagoras: Exactly. What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me, is true for me. Truth is subjective.
Socrates: Do you really mean that? That my opinion is true by virtue of its being my opinion?
Protagoras: Indeed I do.
Scorates: My opinion is: Truth is absolute, not opinion, and that you, Mr. Protagoras, are absolutely in error. Since this is my opinion, then you must grant that it is true according to your philosophy.
Protagoras: You are quite correct, Socrates.
Now imagine if we all took everyone's opinion as an absolute truth... Mathematician's have a hard time accepting that Riemman was right and still refer to his conjecture as a Hypothesis, after a trillion (or more?) 0s on the same line, it's still a hypothesis!!!
There, I fixed it for you.
Thanks for playing.
Tenuous, but you can't deny the relationship. Most papers (especially tabloids) in the UK are owned by News Corp.
They only own The Sun and The Times. The other ones are owned by various others.
The nice thing about the Chinese press (xinhua, chinadaily) is that they are so biased and divorced from reality that no one takes them seriously. Just one step above the North Korean Press. This is quite more honest than the western press, which try to hide their agenda more carefully and present information that we could possibly believe.
[Obviously when it is something the Chinese government cares about Xinhua just repeats the party line verbatim, regardless of how insane it sounds...]
Some of the translated editorials about politics are absolutely bizarre and incoherent. Chinadaily has great comedy value.
> The mid point of 2 distorted sources is not necessarily the center
That said, what should be of major interest for a newspaper is to find the truth and not take sides.
I know Guardian leans towards a more social approach on almost all subjects, I try to take it into account when reading it's articles, but I like it because it's closer to my personal beliefs.
However, as of today, the fact remains: When a journalist wants to go anti-establishment 9 out of 10 times he contacts the Guardian (Snowden, Assange, etc.). Even Hollywood embraced the fact, in "Bourne series" Jason Bourne is after a Guardian Journalist[2] who is about to unveil a CIA conspiracy (or something like that).
So, either I have to accept that there's a huge conspiracy (ala 1984) where the Guardian is actively trying to deceit us all, or it's probably the most famous anti-establishment newspaper worldwide of the last 2 or 3 decades.
ps. I'm stating just a personal opinion here, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm right and others are necessarily wrong or anything.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bourne_Ultimatum_(film)#Plo...
Always use multiple sources. Also always make sure that at least 50% of those sources aren't Associated Press who feed into a lot of different papers.
BBC have a legal obligation not to editorialize.
Look at the specific examples section.